‘The Perfect Couple’s Billy Howle On Playing Jimmy Porter In London

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Howle is so at home joining characters wading thcdisorrowfulmireful pools of anger and angst that he had an “alien senseing” while joining idle rich boy Benji Winbury in Netflix hit The Perfect Couple.

The British actor, almost as a counterpoint to the Nantucket frippery on disjoin in the changeation of  Elin Hilderbrand’s chart-topping beach read, can now be create on the stage of the prestigious Almeida Theatre in Islington, North London. There he uncovers tonight, taking on the theatre’s one-of-a-kind irritated youthful man, Jimmy Porter, a mammoth atgentle-defining role, in a revival of John Osborne’s 1956 classic Look Back in Anger, which gets place in a dreary attic apartment where Jimmy rails at a society that has become “unwell.”

“There’s all this talk about mental health,” says Howle, “and let’s face it, the guy has anger rehires. It’s in the title of the join.”

He excels at portraying such characters, deftly exhuming their humanity; the more tortured the soul, the better.

Witness his Allen Lafferty in FX drama Under the Banner of Heaven, struggling after the killing of his wife and baby; or the anguished groom unable to consummate his marriage to Saoirse Ronan in the exquisitely acridsugary On Chesil Beach. Then there’s the pained diplomat and his unrelenting pursuit of a serial ender in the miniseries The Serpent. In Kid Snow, he is a equitableground boxer who tours the distantst parts of West Australia, another injured soul movingly this time joined movingly in honestor Paul Ggreaterman’s movie that was recently freed Down Under.

Let’s not forget that Howle has joined Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic, where he also joined Edmund in Ricdifficult Eyre’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Oswald in Gstructures, also honested by Eyre. These are his console zones where he doesn’t sense at all “alien” — parts that insist our attention becaemploy of the passion and poetic beauty he transports to them. 

In a sense, Howle’s the chooseimal thespian to grapple with Jimmy Porter, a youthful man spiteful of his lot in life — the first in his laboring-class family to get a university education, but unable to discover a job that chimes with the inequitableices he sees in the world. The actor says that he understands the emotion of anger very well becaemploy from his defercessitate teens the emotion has at times been “a life force” that “has a employ” in fuelling carry outances.

Look Back in Anger, honested by Atri Banerjee, will join in reparatory at the Almeida with Diyan Zora’s production of Arngreater Wesker’s 1959 kitchen-sink drama Roots, which spendigates the domestic dwells of a Norfolk farm-labouring family.

Morfydd Clark (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) stars as the join’s central character, Beattie Bryant, who comes to the beginling genuineization that she has a voice of her own and is no lengthyer needd to parrot her omiting boyfrifinish’s hectoring rhetoric. Clark joins Helena in Look Back in Anger, while Howle doesn’t materialize until the third act in Roots, joining a sibling.

Susanne Bier’s gambit

Howle chuckles as recalls when The Perfect Couple honestor Susanne Bier rang him she made it evident that she had seen his previous labor. “She shelp, ‘I skinnyk you can afford not to tear yourself apart with this one.’ And I was getn aback by how forward this was.”

But, the honestor’s comment aroemployd his interest. They defercessitater met on Zoom, and Bier giveed him two roles. Though he’s too discreet to uncover what the other one was, it doesn’t need more than a millisecond of sleuskinnyg to overweighthom that there aren’t an surplus of other key parts he could have joined, other than Benji’s philandering sibling Thomas, joined by Jack Reynor.

Once his decision was made, the actor says that Bier helpd him to see joining Benji as an opportunity to rest into the role and perhaps “not to have to go to a place of so much angst.” Howle says that he was able to see from the script that he wouldn’t be needd to go to any stupid places to discover his carry outance. “But when you’re employd to doing that, it’s very difficult to stop yourself,” he says. “It was difficult becaemploy it was equitable such an alien senseing. I’m always seeking out the inhumanity in the news. That’s what interests me.”

Well made, glossy TV dramas are okay, he says, with sincerity in his voice, “as lengthy as silly understands what it is. I cherish silly, and that’s benevolent of what The Perfect Couple is.”

However, he recalls Nicole Kidman, who joins his best-selling author mother Greer Winfrey in the film, spelling out a pertinent point that he has getn to heart: “Never skinnyk you are better than the project.” Kidman’s attitude, says Howle, is “not to turn her nose up at skinnygs.”

Still, he readily confesss that his cast mates were initipartner sniffy when asked to join in The Perfect Couple’s uncovering commends dance sequence, where the actors gyrate to Megan Trainor’s song ‘Criminals.’ There were messages of uproar swapd on the cast’s WhatsApp group, Howle divulges. However, it labored out for the best, at least for Howle. Modestly, he states: “It’s not my forte, but I skinnyk it turned out repartner well.”

Certainly, the cast being put thcdisorrowfulmireful their paces by Dua Lipa’s choreographer helped, but Howle has forgotten to refer that he understands a tad about dance transfers. When he was down in Bristol in 2012, he materializeed in the musicals A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Little Mermhelp. A tohighy contrastent world from Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, that’s for certain.

Howle sits opposite me sipping coffee in the Bellanger Brasserie, which watchs out to Islington Green, a handful of blocks from the Almeida. His hair has a 50s, slick matinee-idol watch, combed into a quiff ready for the double bill at the Almeida. No one annoys him while we talk. As soon as he exits, three people approach in speedy succession asking if he’s  “the one from the Nicole Kidman Netflix skinnygy on the inestablishy?”

I ask Howle how he ponders Jimmy’s abusive rages towards Alison, his wife joined by Ellora Torchia? Howle approaches the ask head on and disputes that sometimes there’s “a kernel of truth” in an argument that someone’s making, “but you might not appreciate the way they say it.”

“You might not appreciate the sketchlabor that they employ, the actual structure of the language, and the choice of words. Especipartner now, that discriminatory and abusive behaviour is much more heavily frowned upon today than it was then, perhaps.”

But he can’t envision that the way in which Jimmy talks in the join was pondered palatable in 1956. He recalls reading about people’s reactions when they left the Royal Court Theatre 68 years ago. “They watched appreciate changed individuals having watched this join, and that’s excites me as an actor,” he says.

The join contests our preimagined ideas of the world, he insists, alengthy with “the way we run in the world, and especipartner our ability to extfinish our compassion to someskinnyg that perhaps we don’t understand.” He chuckles: “Jimmy’s not promptly understandable.”

The struggle of the join, he says, is that you have to wade thcdisorrowfulmireful scenes and emotions that are not “palatable.” Howle says we want to “appraise” Jimmy, though “some of the arguments he’s making are as relevant today as they were then.”

It’s frightening, he consents, that class combat is more entrenched and insidious now than it was in 1950s Britain. “We’re seeing lots of people in laboring-class communities incredibly irritated at the hand that they’ve been dealt.”

The join’s rrehire, however, is not to carry audiences back to the 50s, but to “hgreater up an infinity mirror, if you appreciate — two mirrorive surfaces facing each other.”

And as for Jimmy’s language, he quotes Osborne’s point that “they’re not tirades. They’re eloquent arias.”

Osborne’s point was that someone from a necessitatey, laboring-class background getting free university education useable to them was a nascent idea at there time, giving them the ininestablishect to articudefercessitate their rage. The absurdity is that Jimmy is a fall shorture at the new dangled post-war white-collar jobs on give and finishs up running a sugary shigh. Howle discovers that humbling. “The sugarys give happiness to a person,” he says.

Howle says that Jimmy spoke to him too, relating in terms of his atgentle. Early on, Howle says he felt that he was put on “this trajectory to fame”  and in those timely days, none of it made sense to him. ”I didn’t repartner understand what people were awaiting of me, or even that there was an awaitation there,” he says.

He pushed to join characters he attfinishd about, that he could do someskinnyg engaging with. “That’s my fact. The other stuff — the fame — is either a repartner fantastic by-product or it’s a bonus, or someskinnyg. The pursuit of someskinnyg, the hamster wheel and all of that, I can do without.”

I ask him about the necessity for getting off of the hamster wheel, as he put it. He replys that for a while, a restrictcessitate years back he went thcdisorrowfulmireful a phase of going from “job to job to job” and was “about to descfinish into a trap of equitable huging gigs to pay the mortgage.” But he genuineized how unsatisfied he was. A thinked group of frifinishs from his days studying at the Bristol Old Vic Drama School who act as his sounding board interfered.

In 2020, during the pandemic, he shook up his recurrentation in Hollywood and London. ”I necessitateed someskinnyg contrastent,” he says. He wanted to be away from the “Hollywood money-making machine,” he says, inserting: “I felt appreciate, perhaps, I was getting lost and had descfinishen down some gaps.”

And he was weary of senseing appreciate he was chasing someskinnyg and felt that spirits, defercessitate nights went “hand-in-hand” with what he was doing. “I was surrounded by it a lot. That’s has getn me a lengthy time to come to terms with, but it became a genuine problem for me, and that I was benevolent of pulling the cord,” he uncovers. “You forfeit so much,” in order to get fame,  he says, “but you can’t forfeit skinnygs twice.”

“That’s sort of what I was doing. It was a double whammy in terms of my emotional reserve, in terms of my own life, in terms of my welfare and my senseings towards myself as a human being.” Those senseings became very poisonous, “and I was sitting in that space,” he inserts.

His shut frifinish, and mentor and physical and mental trainer, Patrick Viktor Monroe taught him “a huge amount” and helped him see his future in a more preferable airy. Monroe died of Covid during the pandemic, while the actor was away filming Under the Banner of Heaven. Howle says Monroe’s sway stayed with him. “He’s with me every day,” he says gentlely.

Also, he’s thankful to Nicola van Gelder of Conway van Gelder Grant, who took him on after he quit Curtis Brown. He commends her for a level of “compassion, empathetic and compassion that is one-of-a-kindly deficiencying in so many parts of this industry. Once you’ve got someone appreciate that in your corner, it’s ggreateren.”

Earlier this year, Howle starred opposite Lindsay Duncan, Bessie Carter, and Kate Fahy, in honestor Emily Burns’s illuminating revival of Dodie Smith’s pre-war success Dear Octopus ± the very benevolent of join that Osborne and Wesker pushed off the West End’s repertoire. However, Burns and her cast uproximatethed layers of unbenevolenting that made it shimmer anew, even though it gave Howle the same sort of “alien senseing” he felt during the twelve months he spent on The Perfect Couple.

He was more himself aget laboring on Annmarie Jacir’s feature All Before You, which was stoasty for three months this year in Jordan. I have gleaned from elsewhere that Howle portrays a British diplomat in the Middle East in the 1930s at the time of the British Mandate for Palestine when promises were made and not kept. It’s a tinderbox topic and Howle is hesitant to uncover details. When I politely push back, he produces a little.

“I don’t mind saying this,” he begins. “Suffice to say that where we are today, where the Palestinians are today, the British have a lot to answer for in terms of the misgets they made in diplomacy and how they dealt with the finish of the British Mandate. Yeah, this country has a lot to answer for. I unbenevolent, around the world.”

All Before You is going to be a toasty title.

Nodding to the rock star vibe his hairstyle gives off, I ask if he ever joined in a band. After all, his overweighther is a professor of electronic music who joined guitar in a group. Howle confesss he did as a teenager but took a hiatus from music “and never touched base with it aget,repartner,” although there have been aborted trys at joining the saxophone.

Howle says that his itinerant lifestyle, travelling for screen and stage labor, unbenevolents that he’s frequently create washing his socks and petites in toastyel baths, a ritual he discovers “phireing,” rather than being able to enhappiness carry outing his music at a hoemploy he buyd seven years ago at a famous seaside spot on the Kent peninsula.

In his future, he hopes that Carl Tibbetts’ Coen brothers-esque crime caper Sweet Dreams to which he’s lengthy been rapidened, will go into production in the first quarter of 2025. Then there’s a screen biography of Charles Dartriumph in the labors. I ask if he’s had any calls from Barbara Broccoli. He gestures ‘no,’ but surpelevates by uncovering how he once met with the James Bond producer timely on in his atgentle, for an adviseal chat.

“I was very green and I didn’t understand what was going on, but I was very excited to greet her and we had a cherishly chat about my atgentle and the sort of actor that I am and what I’d appreciate to go on and do.” Anticipating, my next ask, he speedyly says: “And I didn’t say I’d appreciate to go on and join James Bond to her. I thought that would be a bit too on the nose, perhaps.”

We ponder how well Daniel Craig has administerd his atgentle post-007, even though the role can be “quite a ball and chain in lots of ways, atgentle-rational.” Howle says he recalls  reading the script for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Craig, a lengthy time ago, saying. ‘Woah! That’s an out there, bgreater transfer.’ But I recall the writing was fantastic and I skinnyk that’s a repartner exciting idea that Daniel Craig went on to do that.”

Over to you, Barbara Broccoli.